The gentleman in spectacles signified, by a shake of the head, that was not his profession.
"Then, sir," continued the other, "do you know anything about chemistry--volatile essences, noxious drugs, subtle poisons? I do." (Here Tom Ryfe observed his ally turn pale.) "Permit me to remark, sir, that if you don't, you are like a school-boy carrying a pocketful of squibs and crackers on the fifth of November, unconscious that a single spark may blow him into the Christmas holidays before he can say 'knife!' Let me see those lozenges, sir--let me have them in my hand; I'll tell you in five seconds what they're made of, and how, and where, and why."
Here the man in spectacles, with considerable presence of mind, threw the whole of his lozenges out of window, under cover of the Times.
"You frighten me, sir," said he; "I wouldn't keep such dangerous articles about me on any consideration."
The old gentleman executed an elaborate wink, denoting extreme satisfaction, at Tom Ryfe. "If you were going through," said he, "I could tell you some funny stories. Queer tricks upon travellers I've seen in my time. Why I was the first person to find out the sinking-floor dodge in West Street. My evidence transported three people for life, and a fourth for fifteen years. I once saw a man pulled down by the heels through a grating in one of the busiest streets in the City, and if I hadn't seen him he would never have come up alive. Why the police apply to me for advice many a time when people are missing. 'Don't distress yourselves,' says I, 'they'll turn up, never fear.' And they do turn up, sir, in nineteen cases out of twenty. In the twentieth, when there's foul play, we generally know something about it within eight-and-forty hours. Bragford? Is it? You get out here, do you? Good-morning, gentlemen; I hope you've enjoyed your jaunt."
Then as Tom, collecting great-coats, newspapers, etc., followed his new acquaintance out of the carriage, this strange old gentleman detained him for an instant by the arm.
"Friend of yours, sir?" said he, pointing to the man in spectacles on the platform. "Never saw him before? I thought so. Sharper, sir, I'll take my oath of it, or something worse. I know the sort; I've exposed hundreds of them. Take my advice, sir, and never see him again."
With that the train glided on, leaving Mr. Ryfe and the gentleman in spectacles staring at each other over a basket of fish and a portmanteau.
"Mad!" observed the latter, with an uneasy attempt at a laugh, and a readjustment of his glasses.
"Mad, no doubt," answered Tom, but followed the lunatic's counsel, nevertheless, so far as to refrain from offering the other a lift in the well-appointed brougham, with its burly coachman, waiting to convey him to Ecclesfield Manor, though his late fellow-traveller was proceeding in that direction on foot.